I leaned back against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, again fighting nausea that was almost worse than before.
Rats? Besides the fact that there weren't any rats, it would have taken a lot of them to do what had been done.
"Jerry," said Bill Drager, "you're sure you weren't out of the office up there for even a minute between midnight and two o'clock? Think hard. Didn't you maybe go to the washroom or something?"
"I'm positive," I told him.
Drager turned to the captain and pointed up to the ventilator.
"There are only two ways into this morgue, Cap," he said. "One's through the door Jerry says he sat in front of, and the other's up there."
My eyes followed his pointing finger, and I studied the ventilator and its position. It was a round opening in the wall, twelve or maybe thirteen inches across, and there was a wheel-like arrangement of vanes that revolved in it. It was turning slowly. It was set in the wall just under the high ceiling, maybe sixteen feet above the floor, and it was directly over the display case.
"Where's that open into?" Quenlin asked.
"Goes right through the wall," Dr. Skibbine told him. "Opens on the alley, just a foot or two above the ground. There's another wheel just like that one on the outside. A little electric motor turns them."
"Could the thing be dismantled from the outside?"
Dr. Skibbine shrugged. "Easiest way to find that out is to go out in the alley and try it. But nobody could get through there, even if you got the thing off. It's too narrow."
"A thin man might--"
"No, even a thin man is wider than twelve inches across the shoulders, and that's my guess on the width of that hole."
Quenlin shrugged.
"Got a flashlight, Drager?" he asked. "Go on out in the alley and take a look. Although if somebody did get that thing off, I don't see how the devil they could have--"
Then he looked down at the case and winced. "If everybody's through looking at this for the moment," he said, "for crying out loud put a sheet over it. It's giving me the willies. I'll dream about ghouls tonight."
The word hit me like a ton of bricks. Because it was then I remembered that we had talked about ghouls early that very evening. About--how had Mr. Paton put it?--"ghosts, ghouls, vampires, werewolves," and about a morgue being a good place for ghouls to hang around; and about--
Some of the others were looking at me, and I knew that Dr. Skibbine, at least, was remembering that conversation. Had he mentioned it to any of the others?
Sergeant Wilson was standing behind the other men and probably didn't know I could see him from where I stood, for he surreptitiously crossed himself.
"Ghouls, nuts!" he said in a voice a bit louder than necessary. "There ain't any such thing. Or is there?"
It was a weak but dramatic ending. Nobody answered him.
Me, I had had enough of that morgue for the moment. Nobody had put a sheet over the case because there was not one available downstairs.
"I'll get a sheet," I said and started up for the office. I stumbled on the bottom step.
"What's eating--" I heard Quenlin say, and then as though he regretted his choice of words, he started over again. "Something's wrong with the kid. Maybe you better send him home, Doc."
He probably didn't realize I could hear him. But by that time I was most of the way up, so I didn't hear the coroner's answer.
IV
From the cabinet I got a sheet, and the others were coming up the steps when I got back with it. Quenlin handed it to Wilson.
"You put it on, Sarge," he said.
Wilson took it, and hesitated. I had seen his gesture downstairs and I knew he was scared stiff to go back down there alone. I was scared, too, but I did my Boy Scout act for the day and said:
"I'll go down with you, Sergeant. I want to take a look at that ventilator."
While he put the sheet over the broken case, I stared up at the ventilator and saw the bent vane. As I watched, a hand reached through the slit between that vane and the next and bent it some more.
Then the hand, Bill Drager's hand, reached through the widened slit and groped for the nut on the center of the shaft on which the ventilator wheel revolved. Yes, the ventilator could be removed and replaced from the outside. The bent vane made it look as though that had been done.
But why? After the ventilator had been taken off, what then? The opening was too small for a man to get through and besides it was twelve feet above the glass display case.
Sergeant Wilson went past me up the stairs, and I followed him up. The conversation died abruptly as I went through the door, and I suspected that I had been the subject of the talk.
Dr. Skibbine was looking at me.
"The cap's right, Jerry," he said. "You don't look so well. We're going to be around here from now on, so you take the rest of the night off. Get some sleep."
Sleep, I thought. What's that? How could I sleep now? I felt dopy, I'll admit, from lack of it. But the mere thought of turning out a light and lying down alone in a dark room--huh-uh! I must have been a little lightheaded just then, for a goofy parody was running through my brain:
A ghoul hath murdered sleep, the innocent sleep, sleep that knits . . .
"Thanks, Dr. Skibbine," I said. "I--I guess it will do me good, at that."
It would get me out of here, somewhere where I could think without a lot of people talking. If I could get the unicorns and rhinoceros out of my mind, maybe I had the key. Maybe, but it didn't make sense yet.
I put on my hat and went outside and walked around the building into the dark alley.
Bill Drager's face was a dim patch in the light that came through the circular hole in the wall where the ventilator had been.
He saw me coming and called out sharply, "Who's that?" and stood up. When he stood, he seemed to vanish, because it put him back in the darkness.
"It's me--Jerry Grant," I said. "Find out anything, Bill?"
"Just what you see. The ventilator comes out, from the outside. But it isn't a big enough hole for a man." He laughed a little off-key. "A ghoul, I don't know. How big is a ghoul, Jerry?"
"Can it, Bill," I said. "Did you do that in the dark? Didn't you bring a flashlight?"
"No. Look, whoever did it earlier in the night, if somebody did, wouldn't have dared use a light. They'd be too easy to see from either end of the alley. I wanted to see if it could be done in the dark."
"Yes," I said thoughtfully. "But the light from the inside shows."
"Was it on between midnight and two?"
"Um--no. I hadn't thought of that."
I stared at the hole in the wall. It was just about a foot in diameter. Large enough for a man to stick his head into, but not to crawl through.
Bill Drager was still standing back in the dark, but now that my eyes were used to the alley, I could make out the shadowy outline of his body.
"Jerry," he said, "you've been studying this superstition stuff. Just what is a ghoul?"
"Something in Eastern mythology, Bill. An imaginary creature that robs graves and feeds on corpses. The modern use of the word is confined to someone who robs graves, usually for jewelry that is sometimes interred with the bodies. Back in the early days of medicine, bodies were stolen and sold to the anatomists for purposes of dissection, too."
"The modern ones don't--uh--"
"There have been psychopathic cases, a few of them. One happened in Paris, in modern times. A man named Bertrand. Charles Fort tells about him in his book Wild Talents."
"Wild Talents, huh?" said Bill. "What happened?"
"Graves in a Paris cemetery were being dug up by something or someone who--" there in the dark alley, I couldn't say it plainly--"who--uh--acted like a ghoul. They couldn't catch him but they set a blunderbuss trap. It got this man Bertrand, and he confessed."
Bill Drager didn't say anything, just stood there. Then, just as though I could read his mind, I got scared because I knew what he was thinking. If anything like that had
happened here tonight, there was only one person it could possibly have been.
Me.
Bill Drager was standing there silently, staring at me, and wondering whether I--
Then I knew why the others had stopped talking when I had come up the stairs just a few minutes before, back at the morgue. No, there was not a shred of proof, unless you can call process of elimination proof. But there had been a faint unspoken suspicion that somehow seemed a thousand times worse than an accusation I could deny.
I knew, then, that unless this case was solved suspicion would follow me the rest of my life. Something too absurd for open accusation. But people would look at me and wonder, and the mere possibility would make them shudder. Every word I spoke would be weighed to see whether it might indicate an unbalanced mind.
Even Bill Drager, one of my best friends, was wondering about me now.
"Bill," I said, "for God's sake, you don't think--"
"Of course not, Jerry."
But the fact that he knew what I meant before I had finished the sentence, proved I had been right about what he had been thinking.
There was something else in his voice, too, although he had tried to keep it out. Fear. He was alone with me in a dark alley, and I realized now why he had stepped back out of the light so quickly. Bill Drager was a little afraid of me.
But this was no time or place to talk about it. The atmosphere was wrong. Anything I could say would make things worse.
So I merely said, "Well, so long, Bill," as I turned and walked toward the street.
Half a block up the street on the other side was an all-night restaurant, and I headed for it. Not to eat, for I felt as though I would never want to eat again. The very thought of food was sickening. But a cup of coffee might take away some of the numbness in my mind.
Hank Perry was on duty behind the counter, and he was alone.
"Hi, Jerry," he said, as I sat down on a stool at the counter. "Off early tonight?"
I nodded and let it go at that.
"Just a cup of black coffee, Hank," I told him, and forestalled any salestalk by adding, "I'm not hungry. Just ate."
Silly thing to say, I realized the minute I had said it. Suppose someone asked Hank later what I had said when I came in. They all knew, back there, that I had not brought a lunch to work and hadn't eaten. Would I, from now on, have to watch every word I said to avoid slips like that?
But whatever significance Hank or others might read into my words later, there was nothing odd about them now, as long as Hank didn't know what had happened at the morgue.
He brought my coffee. I stirred in sugar and waited for it to cool enough to drink.
"Nice night out," Hank said.
I hadn't noticed, but I said, "Yeah."
To me it was one terrible night out, but I couldn't tell him that without spilling the rest of the story.
"How was business tonight, Hank?" I asked.
"Pretty slow."
"How many customers," I asked, "did you have between midnight and two o'clock?"
"Hardly any. Why?"
"Hank," I said, "something happened then. Look, I can't tell you about it now, honestly. I don't know whether or not it's going to be given out to the newspapers. If it isn't, it would lose me my job even to mention it. But will you think hard if you saw anybody or anything out of the ordinary between twelve and two?"
"Um," said Hank, leaning against the counter thoughtfully. "That's a couple of hours ago. Must have had several customers in here during that time. But all I can remember are regulars. People on night shifts that come in regularly."
"When you're standing at that grill in the window frying something, you can see out across the street," I said. "You ought to be able to see down as far as the alley, because this is a pretty wide street."
"Yeah, I can."
"Did you see anyone walk or drive in there?"
"Golly," said Hank. "Yeah, I did. I think it was around one o'clock. I happened to notice the guy on account of what he was carrying."
I felt my heart hammering with sudden excitement.
"What was he carrying? And what did he look like?"
"I didn't notice what he looked like," said Hank. "He was in shadow most of the time. But he was carrying a bowling ball."
"A bowling ball?"
Hank nodded. "That's what made me notice him. There aren't any alleys --I mean bowling alleys--right around here. I bowl myself so I wondered where this guy had been rolling."
"You mean he was carrying a bowling ball under his arm?"
I was still incredulous, even though Hank's voice showed me he was not kidding.
He looked at me contemptuously.
"No. Bowlers never carry 'em like that on the street. There's a sort of bag that's made for the purpose. A little bigger than the ball, some of them, so a guy can put in his bowling shoes and stuff."
I closed my eyes a moment to try to make sense out of it. Of all the things on this mad night; it seemed the maddest that a bowling ball had been carried into the alley by the morgue--or something the shape of a bowling ball. At just the right time, too. One o'clock.
It would be a devil of a coincidence if the man Hank had seen hadn't been the one.
"You're sure it was a bowling ball case?"
"Positive. I got one like it myself. And the way he carried it, it was just heavy enough to have the ball in it." He looked at me curiously. "Say, Jerry, I never thought of it before, but a case like that would be a handy thing to carry a bomb in. Did someone try to plant a bomb at the morgue?"
"No."
"Then if it wasn't a bowling ball --and you act like you think it wasn't--what would it have been?"
"I wish I knew," I told him. "I wish to high heaven I knew."
I downed the rest of my coffee and stood up.
"Thanks a lot, Hank," I said. "Listen, you think it over and see if you can remember anything else about that case or the man who carried it. I'll see you later."
V
What I needed was some fresh air, so I started walking. I didn't pay any attention to where I was going; I just walked.
My feet didn't take me in circles, but my mind did. A bowling ball! Why would a bowling ball, or something shaped like it, be carried into the alley back of the morgue? A bowling ball would fit into that ventilator hole, all right, and a dropped bowling ball would have broken the glass of the case.
But a bowling ball wouldn't have done--the rest of it.
I vaguely remembered some mention of bowling earlier in the evening and thought back to what it was. Oh yes. Dr. Skibbine and Mr. Paton had been going to bowl a game instead of playing a second game of chess. But neither of them had bowling balls along. Anyway, if Dr. Skibbine had told the truth, they had both been home by midnight.
If not a bowling ball, then what? A ghoul? A spherical ghoul?
The thought was so incongruously horrible that I wanted to stop, right there in the middle of the sidewalk and laugh like a maniac. Maybe I was near hysteria.
I thought of going back to the morgue and telling them about it, and laughing. Watching Quenlin's face and Wilson's when I told them that our guest had been a rnan-eating bowling ball. A spherical--
Then I stopped walking, because all of a sudden I knew what the bowling ball had been, and I had the most important part of the answer.
Somewhere a clock was striking half-past three, and I looked around to see where I was. Oak Street, only a few doors from Grant Parkway. That meant I had come fifteen or sixteen blocks from the morgue and that I was only a block and a half from the zoo. At the zoo, I could find out if I was right.
So I started walking again. A block and a half later I was across the street from the zoo right in front of Mr. Paton's house. Strangely, there was a light in one of the downstairs rooms.
I went up onto the porch and rang the bell. Mr. Paton came to answer it. He was wearing a dressing gown, but I could see shoes and the bottoms of his trouser legs under it.
He d
idn't look surprised at all when he opened the door.
"Yes, Jerry?" he said, almost as though he had been expecting me.
"I'm glad you're still up, Mr. Paton," I said. "Could you walk across with me and get me past the guard at the gate? I'd like to look at one of the cages and verify--something."
"You guessed then, Jerry?"
"Yes, Mr. Paton," I told him. Then I had a sudden thought that scared me a little. "You were seen going into the alley," I added quickly, "and the man who saw you knows I came here. He saw you carrying--"
He held up his hand and smiled.
"You needn't worry, Jerry," he said. "I know it's over--the minute anybody is smart enough to guess. And--well, I murdered a man all right, but I'm not the type to murder another to try to cover up, because I can see where that would lead. The man I did kill deserved it, and I gambled on--Well never mind all that."
"Who was he?" I asked.
"His name was Mark Leedom. He was my assistant four years ago. I was foolish at that time--I'd lost money speculating and I stole some zoo funds. They were supposed to be used for the purchase of--Never mind the details. Mark Leedom found out and got proof.
"He made me turn over most of the money to him, and he--retired, and moved out of town. But he's been coming back periodically to keep shaking me down. He was a rat, Jerry, a worse crook than I ever thought of being. This time I couldn't pay so I killed him."
"You were going to make it look like an accident on the Mill Road?" I said. "You killed him here and took him--"
"Yes, I was going to have the car run over his head, so he wouldn't be identified. I missed by inches, but I couldn't try again because another car was coming, and I had to keep on driving away.
"Luckily, Doc Skibbine didn't know him. It was while Doc was in South America that Leedom worked for me. But there are lots of people around who did know him. Some curiosity seeker would have identified him in the week they hold an unidentified body and--well, once they knew who he was and traced things back, they'd have got to me eventually for the old business four years ago if not the fact that I killed him."
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